1. Take two extremely complex models with outdated underlying data
2. Combine the two models as the basis for further analysis, even though the creators of the models expressly warned that doing so would lead to erroneous conclusions.
3. Embed the Frankenstein analysis in influential public policy documents.
4. Pressure media organs to report upon Frankenstein analysis in order to mold public opinion.
Presumably, each scenario derives from some complex assignment of yearly energy production by different sources among the various sectors of the economies of the nations of the world, and the total emissions from all these sources is converted to a temperature gain. On can then draw graphs of emissions vs. years out to 2100 and temperature gain vs. years out to 2100 for each scenario. The IPCC posted these crucial, central graphs as tiny 2-inch square plots. Since the assumptions that go into a scenario involve an almost infinite guesses regarding the world economy, the actions of hundreds of nations, the evolution of energy technology, and the competition or possibly even outright wars between nations, it seems incredible to me that any credence should be given to any of them.
What a scenario says to me is that if I draw any arbitrary curve of world emissions per year out to 2100, then I can produce a plot of temperature gain vs. year out to 2100. The conversion from cumulative emissions to temperature gain is simple and linear. I gave it in previous postings.
My view is we should throw out all the SSP scenarios. They are all the product of a lot of work built on imagination of the future.
Instead, we can draw a family of arbitrary curves of emissions per year out to 2100 and for each such curve, show the accompanying plot of a family of temperature gains vs. year out to 2100. Then we have a family of curves for emissions and the related family of curves for temperature gain. As we move forward in the 21st century we can note where we are by counting emissions. The nations of the world are challenged to move downward on these charts. How well they do is measured by where the data point of current cumulative emissions (and estimated temperature therefrom) stack up against these curves.
Get rid of scenarios, get rid of climate models, get rid of the climate bureaucracy imbedded in our government bureaucracy. Focus on energy policies that assure worldwide flourishing.
I think net-zero CO2 is a fine aspiration, and that requires net-zero fossil fuel consumption to achieve (oil, gas, coal). I'd much prefer FF exit targets rather than temperature or emissions targets. But using the conventional temperature methodologies a 2C target by 2100 seems possible, and 1.5 does not.
I know your dad is one of the early reduction of C02 advocates, but why net zero carbon? I'd be happy to do it sensibly with nuclear power (and fusion in the future) and eliminate particulate pollutants.
However, do we really believe that if we eliminate all carbon then magically the climate would stabilize at some "idealized" temperature forever? Is that desirable? Is it realistic? what about natural variability, would we attempt to address that next?
One very important distinction to keep in mind is that there are two "Net Zeros". There is the scientific definition whereby human GHG contributions - human GHG removals are equal to zero. That is not the Net Zero that is being promoted. What is being promoted is the Carbon Trading Scam called "Net Zero". That is just a devious effort to make giant government guaranteed profits for the uber-wealthy investors, give unscrupulous corporations greenwashing virtue signalling, while facilitating massive wealth transfer from the Western Middle Class to Developing Nations. I couple good examples:
EXPOSED: The Biggest Green SCAM In ESG | Breaking Points, Krystal breaks down the corporate scam of ESG and carbon offset programs in the USA:
And all these companies like Google & Amazon that buy wind & solar RECs so they can falsely claim they are "carbon neutral". Sorry, but that's not how the electrical grid works. They are consuming avg grid mix same as every other electricity consumer. And all their wind & solar does is reduce the efficiency of the electrical grid, which means they don't reduce emissions. In fact, they drastically INCREASE emissions, when you consider their very high opportunity cost. You need only compare the emissions reductions failure that is Germany with the emissions reductions success that is France.
Well, that's why I call net-zero CO2 aspirational. In practical terms, we may get down to very low levels of CO2 and then decide that's OK. That is a choice for the future. For now, it is clear we should start the job. Once we get some momentum we can then start to discuss how to end the job. IMO we are not there yet.
If they REALLY wanted to reduce emissions they would abandon all subsidies, mandates and exemptions, and all carbon trading scams like the Net Zero charade and replace that with a Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend. Let the free market decide what methods are most cost effective at reducing emissions.
Question, what specifically have governments actually done (other than decommission nuclear power plants) to mitigate warming.
It seems that if we had not hyperventilated about climate change, and just continued to expand and improve our economy and those of the developing world we'd be where we are today.
CO2 continues to increase and we'll still hit the "natural" global warming that has been going on since the 1860s. What am I missing ?
What are you missing? I'll tell you, its called manufactured crises used to push agendas that make the lives of the 99% worse, not better.
From THE GLOBAL REVOLUTION by The Club of Rome 1991 "Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified."[2] "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."[3]
In order to put a stop to using erroneous models, there has to be an understanding of the motivations as to why it’s being done in the first place. For politicians, such studies provide a pretext to give themselves more power and control over the economy in the name of fighting climate change. In fact, the political left has long wanted increased centralization of power in the Federal government, and climate change is probably the best tool they’ve found so far to advance that cause. The Malthusianism of the 1970s didn’t stand the test of time.
The academicians primarily follow the funding. There is probably not much political interest in funding studies that indicate that climate change is not an immediate existential threat requiring major government interventions.
I think the main reasons for scenario misuse lie with pretty boring factors that underlie academic research and are not much connected to climate politics or advocacy. The most often reason I hear for misusing scenarios is that researchers don't have any other choice, because these are the scenarios that have been made available. A horrible excuse, but there it is.
Many thanks for your response. But why are the only scenarios made available the ones that exaggerate the impacts? You rarely see studies using scenarios that minimize impacts. I continue to believe there are other factors underlying this, but admittedly have nowhere near the insight that you do into the details of academia.
I'll do a post in the near term that makes that paper available to all paid subscribers. In fact I am overdue to do that for several papers, so thanks for the prompt!
Here’s the thing... most of these papers basically say “we ran these models, made some assumptions, and the future looks bad.” Maybe we should put a moratorium on the use of government funds to find the same studies and over? (E.g. impact of climate change on hair styles in 2100.” We could take that funding and put more into technologies for various kinds of decarbonization. However, that would switch the funding to other disciplines.. If we followed “the science” the Nature paper said that ginning up more angst is not helpful to policy, and it’s probably bad for mental health. So I’m backing up from “which scenario” to “do these kinds of studies have utility?”
I hate to say it but it sounds like a disciplinary hegemony thing.. it's really an engineering problem but the physicists won't hand it off.. from your paper:
"As a member of Congress asked more than a decade ago: “How much longer do you think it will take before [the USGCRP is] able to hone [its] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take . . . justified by what we already know?”"
That's an technology/energy policy, plus adaptation, question not an atmospheric modeling question. Congress was simply asking the wrong people. Like asking a car company about bikes. They don't know and it won't help you.
True story: Dan Sarewitz and I were invited to make this argument before the NAS and when we said that climate modeling was unlikely to be a high priority for policy-relevant climate research, the chair (a climate modeler) went ballistic, pounded the table and said to us, "Well if that is so then you need to come up with another justification for $X million in federal funding for climate modeling work!"
It was that paper more than any other that got me crossways with the climate scientists, not hurricanes or scenarios. That one was a bit too close to home.
Here's my opinion.. What we might call "USG management of the the scientific enterprise broadly speaking" either doesn't exist (Problem A) or is failing (Problem B) when it cannot handle obvious disciplinary hegemony obfuscations of real-world utility. You might think that it would exist and be housed at OSTP; my experience there was that it was about more money and fewer regs for scientists and universities (more H1B visas. In fact, no one manages or regulates it- OSTP's job is to advocate for that community's interests. It's a self-managed enterprise- actively resistant to management, e.g. story of "stopping" gain of function research. But if you called for oversight, you'd be (called) anti-science. Imagine each set of (non-basic) research co-prioritized by the communities who are supposed to use it. This actually happens at smaller scales (say some USDA programs) but not at the larger scales.
Super. Like water over rock over eons. The scenarios that are misused with purpose under the plausible deniability of scientific complexity and the vanishingly small - and shrinking by decade - likelihood of occurrence won’t withstand the water being applied by many like you.
And that water volume and pressure are increasing. By sunlight and by data. Finally.
This is exactly the sort of question raised by those who use RCP4.5 as policy success.
The short answer is that the Paris Agreement has enshrined 2.0 and 1.5. O current policies the world is tracking more towards ~2.6. A lot of uncertainties in these sorts of guesstimates of course. But the world is far closer to policy targets than anyone thought we'd be a few decades ago.
When people run with false models the facts will eventually come out even ironically from their own scientists.
RCP8.5 has had such a slaughtering they know it is no longer credible and have to ditch or change it. However they want to continue the doom and gloom scenario so they hook 8.5 to 4.5 hoping things doom and gloom will still be credible.
But because it is a political story line not a scientific one they are soon exposed by scholars like yourself.
The UN is as aa result left as a shambles with more to come as the news comes out more and more.
These are the death throes of the global warming scam now exposed as a political project by their own and other scientists and scholars.
I think that you have made it clear that the main “scientific “ purpose of the scenarios is to provide input to the models in order to project potential future conditions. Problems with the models are well known and model results are easily politicized.
Isn’t the real problem one of development of energy (not climate) policies that assure maximum human well being while not destroying our environment?
It seems to me that the current mindset around scenarios and climate models is not a productive approach.
Just another example of gaslighting with erroneous models. Who is guilty of misinformation the left or the right? Insane, some smart reporter could win a Pulitzer by just dropping the dime on this stuff.
If you haven’t been reading the twitter files stuff you should be.
I have been pushing Taibbi and Schellenberger to do a release regarding “climate”, I guarantee we will find you have been throttled and shadow banned because you question the narrative.
I miss Shellenberger's energy and climate essays as they were so good. Guess he and Taibbi are too distracted (in a good way) with shining floodlights on the censorship complex. It's a war that needs to be fought, though.
I think it’s all the same story, the same people limiting discussion, in this case climate. Pretty sure Mike will come out with a twitter file segment specific to climate.
Polls show fewer and fewer are buying the scam hence the need to prevent debate, all those accusations of “denier”.
If “they” lie continually about what is happening today why would I believe what their models say about 2100 or 2300?
Agreed. Same tactics, different subject, going on for far longer (20 years+?). The ironic part is that people who want less CO2 and skeptics that want plentiful energy and less environmental impact should agree on the same solution which is more atomic power. They should be on the same side! Funny how the loudest voices against nuclear come from the wind/solar/battery camps and get policy passed that helps them prevent a level playing field.....
That's why they love those methods so much. They can do all their manipulation behind the scenes without any public exposure. Their real dream is of course the CBDC so they can arbitrarily punish us serfs by curtailing our ability to buy various things, like travel or meat, or fuel, or electricity. No judge, no jury, no trial, just some bureaucrat deciding your fate. More likely an AI algorithm that will conclude you are a bad boy and need to be spanked.
Dr. Pielke. I am commenting on this older post because it is relevant to my comment. Have you seen the paper regarding RCP8.5 at this link and the associated commentary and response? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32747549/ This paper was referenced in the following new paper on maintain snowfall decline in California mountains to justify use of RCP8.5. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00382-023-06776-w.pdf?pdf=button
What a coincidence! I just put up a tweet thread on these exact papers
https://twitter.com/rogerpielkejr/status/1662085855627067398?s=46&t=WMSRPCBBWz_Ojw7zB5V3AA
Suggestion for Roger: Why don't you hook up somehow with Shellenberger and Newhouse at their "PUBLIC" substack?
Here's a recipe for mass misinformation:
1. Take two extremely complex models with outdated underlying data
2. Combine the two models as the basis for further analysis, even though the creators of the models expressly warned that doing so would lead to erroneous conclusions.
3. Embed the Frankenstein analysis in influential public policy documents.
4. Pressure media organs to report upon Frankenstein analysis in order to mold public opinion.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Add "no sensitivity analysis of underlying assumptions" :)
“Scenario misuse is endemic in climate research. There are understandable reasons why this has occurred. ”
No there aren’t. It has always been fraud.
The walls continue to fracture, thanks to Musk. Watching what they are trying to do to him, anyone is a target.
https://public.substack.com/p/now-theyre-trying-censor-your-text
I will do my part in getting your message out there. Your readers can share on Twitter or other places. All we can do is keep trying.
Thanks!
Presumably, each scenario derives from some complex assignment of yearly energy production by different sources among the various sectors of the economies of the nations of the world, and the total emissions from all these sources is converted to a temperature gain. On can then draw graphs of emissions vs. years out to 2100 and temperature gain vs. years out to 2100 for each scenario. The IPCC posted these crucial, central graphs as tiny 2-inch square plots. Since the assumptions that go into a scenario involve an almost infinite guesses regarding the world economy, the actions of hundreds of nations, the evolution of energy technology, and the competition or possibly even outright wars between nations, it seems incredible to me that any credence should be given to any of them.
What a scenario says to me is that if I draw any arbitrary curve of world emissions per year out to 2100, then I can produce a plot of temperature gain vs. year out to 2100. The conversion from cumulative emissions to temperature gain is simple and linear. I gave it in previous postings.
My view is we should throw out all the SSP scenarios. They are all the product of a lot of work built on imagination of the future.
Instead, we can draw a family of arbitrary curves of emissions per year out to 2100 and for each such curve, show the accompanying plot of a family of temperature gains vs. year out to 2100. Then we have a family of curves for emissions and the related family of curves for temperature gain. As we move forward in the 21st century we can note where we are by counting emissions. The nations of the world are challenged to move downward on these charts. How well they do is measured by where the data point of current cumulative emissions (and estimated temperature therefrom) stack up against these curves.
Get rid of scenarios, get rid of climate models, get rid of the climate bureaucracy imbedded in our government bureaucracy. Focus on energy policies that assure worldwide flourishing.
1.5 was not a realistic target right? Is 2.0? What do you think we should be tracking toward?
I think net-zero CO2 is a fine aspiration, and that requires net-zero fossil fuel consumption to achieve (oil, gas, coal). I'd much prefer FF exit targets rather than temperature or emissions targets. But using the conventional temperature methodologies a 2C target by 2100 seems possible, and 1.5 does not.
Ugh!!
FF exit target - net zero target - 2C target - whatever is used, where is the cost/benefit analysis?
I know your dad is one of the early reduction of C02 advocates, but why net zero carbon? I'd be happy to do it sensibly with nuclear power (and fusion in the future) and eliminate particulate pollutants.
However, do we really believe that if we eliminate all carbon then magically the climate would stabilize at some "idealized" temperature forever? Is that desirable? Is it realistic? what about natural variability, would we attempt to address that next?
One very important distinction to keep in mind is that there are two "Net Zeros". There is the scientific definition whereby human GHG contributions - human GHG removals are equal to zero. That is not the Net Zero that is being promoted. What is being promoted is the Carbon Trading Scam called "Net Zero". That is just a devious effort to make giant government guaranteed profits for the uber-wealthy investors, give unscrupulous corporations greenwashing virtue signalling, while facilitating massive wealth transfer from the Western Middle Class to Developing Nations. I couple good examples:
EXPOSED: The Biggest Green SCAM In ESG | Breaking Points, Krystal breaks down the corporate scam of ESG and carbon offset programs in the USA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXxqjjgH0Ec&t=2s
Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
And all these companies like Google & Amazon that buy wind & solar RECs so they can falsely claim they are "carbon neutral". Sorry, but that's not how the electrical grid works. They are consuming avg grid mix same as every other electricity consumer. And all their wind & solar does is reduce the efficiency of the electrical grid, which means they don't reduce emissions. In fact, they drastically INCREASE emissions, when you consider their very high opportunity cost. You need only compare the emissions reductions failure that is Germany with the emissions reductions success that is France.
Well, that's why I call net-zero CO2 aspirational. In practical terms, we may get down to very low levels of CO2 and then decide that's OK. That is a choice for the future. For now, it is clear we should start the job. Once we get some momentum we can then start to discuss how to end the job. IMO we are not there yet.
If they REALLY wanted to reduce emissions they would abandon all subsidies, mandates and exemptions, and all carbon trading scams like the Net Zero charade and replace that with a Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend. Let the free market decide what methods are most cost effective at reducing emissions.
See above comment please.
Question, what specifically have governments actually done (other than decommission nuclear power plants) to mitigate warming.
It seems that if we had not hyperventilated about climate change, and just continued to expand and improve our economy and those of the developing world we'd be where we are today.
CO2 continues to increase and we'll still hit the "natural" global warming that has been going on since the 1860s. What am I missing ?
What are you missing? I'll tell you, its called manufactured crises used to push agendas that make the lives of the 99% worse, not better.
From THE GLOBAL REVOLUTION by The Club of Rome 1991 "Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified."[2] "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."[3]
You are 100% on target, you must be a bad person.
I resemble that too
In order to put a stop to using erroneous models, there has to be an understanding of the motivations as to why it’s being done in the first place. For politicians, such studies provide a pretext to give themselves more power and control over the economy in the name of fighting climate change. In fact, the political left has long wanted increased centralization of power in the Federal government, and climate change is probably the best tool they’ve found so far to advance that cause. The Malthusianism of the 1970s didn’t stand the test of time.
The academicians primarily follow the funding. There is probably not much political interest in funding studies that indicate that climate change is not an immediate existential threat requiring major government interventions.
I think the main reasons for scenario misuse lie with pretty boring factors that underlie academic research and are not much connected to climate politics or advocacy. The most often reason I hear for misusing scenarios is that researchers don't have any other choice, because these are the scenarios that have been made available. A horrible excuse, but there it is.
Many thanks for your response. But why are the only scenarios made available the ones that exaggerate the impacts? You rarely see studies using scenarios that minimize impacts. I continue to believe there are other factors underlying this, but admittedly have nowhere near the insight that you do into the details of academia.
Thank you again.
There is a long story about how the scenarios came to be, we tell some of that here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620304655
I'll do a post in the near term that makes that paper available to all paid subscribers. In fact I am overdue to do that for several papers, so thanks for the prompt!
I think the fact that there are dozens of climate models and all of them track higher temp than reality tells me something.
If this was real science then there would be a range of outcomes above and below.
All I see is advocacy.
Here’s the thing... most of these papers basically say “we ran these models, made some assumptions, and the future looks bad.” Maybe we should put a moratorium on the use of government funds to find the same studies and over? (E.g. impact of climate change on hair styles in 2100.” We could take that funding and put more into technologies for various kinds of decarbonization. However, that would switch the funding to other disciplines.. If we followed “the science” the Nature paper said that ginning up more angst is not helpful to policy, and it’s probably bad for mental health. So I’m backing up from “which scenario” to “do these kinds of studies have utility?”
Agreed. The paper that got me in the most hot water in my career was this one, following a similar line of argument:
https://issues.org/p_pielke/
I hate to say it but it sounds like a disciplinary hegemony thing.. it's really an engineering problem but the physicists won't hand it off.. from your paper:
"As a member of Congress asked more than a decade ago: “How much longer do you think it will take before [the USGCRP is] able to hone [its] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take . . . justified by what we already know?”"
That's an technology/energy policy, plus adaptation, question not an atmospheric modeling question. Congress was simply asking the wrong people. Like asking a car company about bikes. They don't know and it won't help you.
You are 100% correct.
True story: Dan Sarewitz and I were invited to make this argument before the NAS and when we said that climate modeling was unlikely to be a high priority for policy-relevant climate research, the chair (a climate modeler) went ballistic, pounded the table and said to us, "Well if that is so then you need to come up with another justification for $X million in federal funding for climate modeling work!"
It was that paper more than any other that got me crossways with the climate scientists, not hurricanes or scenarios. That one was a bit too close to home.
Here's my opinion.. What we might call "USG management of the the scientific enterprise broadly speaking" either doesn't exist (Problem A) or is failing (Problem B) when it cannot handle obvious disciplinary hegemony obfuscations of real-world utility. You might think that it would exist and be housed at OSTP; my experience there was that it was about more money and fewer regs for scientists and universities (more H1B visas. In fact, no one manages or regulates it- OSTP's job is to advocate for that community's interests. It's a self-managed enterprise- actively resistant to management, e.g. story of "stopping" gain of function research. But if you called for oversight, you'd be (called) anti-science. Imagine each set of (non-basic) research co-prioritized by the communities who are supposed to use it. This actually happens at smaller scales (say some USDA programs) but not at the larger scales.
Super. Like water over rock over eons. The scenarios that are misused with purpose under the plausible deniability of scientific complexity and the vanishingly small - and shrinking by decade - likelihood of occurrence won’t withstand the water being applied by many like you.
And that water volume and pressure are increasing. By sunlight and by data. Finally.
Roger: If we are tracking well below 4.5, and 4.5 equates to 2.9C warming by 2100 why do we need to do any more?
This is exactly the sort of question raised by those who use RCP4.5 as policy success.
The short answer is that the Paris Agreement has enshrined 2.0 and 1.5. O current policies the world is tracking more towards ~2.6. A lot of uncertainties in these sorts of guesstimates of course. But the world is far closer to policy targets than anyone thought we'd be a few decades ago.
1.5 is not realistic right? Is 2.0? What do you think we should be tracking toward?
When people run with false models the facts will eventually come out even ironically from their own scientists.
RCP8.5 has had such a slaughtering they know it is no longer credible and have to ditch or change it. However they want to continue the doom and gloom scenario so they hook 8.5 to 4.5 hoping things doom and gloom will still be credible.
But because it is a political story line not a scientific one they are soon exposed by scholars like yourself.
The UN is as aa result left as a shambles with more to come as the news comes out more and more.
These are the death throes of the global warming scam now exposed as a political project by their own and other scientists and scholars.
I think that you have made it clear that the main “scientific “ purpose of the scenarios is to provide input to the models in order to project potential future conditions. Problems with the models are well known and model results are easily politicized.
Isn’t the real problem one of development of energy (not climate) policies that assure maximum human well being while not destroying our environment?
It seems to me that the current mindset around scenarios and climate models is not a productive approach.
Just another example of gaslighting with erroneous models. Who is guilty of misinformation the left or the right? Insane, some smart reporter could win a Pulitzer by just dropping the dime on this stuff.
I am amazed but I guess not surprised at the comprehensive media blackout on pretty much everything I discuss here ;-)
Why would you be surprised?
If you haven’t been reading the twitter files stuff you should be.
I have been pushing Taibbi and Schellenberger to do a release regarding “climate”, I guarantee we will find you have been throttled and shadow banned because you question the narrative.
The scope of this grows every day.
I miss Shellenberger's energy and climate essays as they were so good. Guess he and Taibbi are too distracted (in a good way) with shining floodlights on the censorship complex. It's a war that needs to be fought, though.
I think it’s all the same story, the same people limiting discussion, in this case climate. Pretty sure Mike will come out with a twitter file segment specific to climate.
Polls show fewer and fewer are buying the scam hence the need to prevent debate, all those accusations of “denier”.
If “they” lie continually about what is happening today why would I believe what their models say about 2100 or 2300?
Agreed. Same tactics, different subject, going on for far longer (20 years+?). The ironic part is that people who want less CO2 and skeptics that want plentiful energy and less environmental impact should agree on the same solution which is more atomic power. They should be on the same side! Funny how the loudest voices against nuclear come from the wind/solar/battery camps and get policy passed that helps them prevent a level playing field.....
Ha, I don't need evidence that I've been shadow-banned, I've been banned out in the daylight ;-)
Above board ban is politics
Shadow bans and throttling are far worse as you don’t know it’s occurring.
At least you can fight a public ban
That's why they love those methods so much. They can do all their manipulation behind the scenes without any public exposure. Their real dream is of course the CBDC so they can arbitrarily punish us serfs by curtailing our ability to buy various things, like travel or meat, or fuel, or electricity. No judge, no jury, no trial, just some bureaucrat deciding your fate. More likely an AI algorithm that will conclude you are a bad boy and need to be spanked.